La Salamandre

A landmark film of modern cinema, filled with an infectious high spirit that hasn't been felt since the early days of the New Wave. Tanner's most important achievement is his awareness of the oblique, casual, but all-important ways in which people interact - a new style of describing personal relationships that makes the melodramatic confrontations of most earlier films seem as subtle as boxcars coupling. The plot concerns the efforts of two young writers - one who relies on intuition, and one who relies on facts - to construct a T.V. script around a purported murder attempt by a young working woman who doesn't get along too well with the world. As the spacey, kinkily defiant heroine, Bulle Ogier's magnificent performance manages to create a recognizably modern woman without appearing sanctimonious or feebly “with it.”

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